Available in hardcopy on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. Also available as ebook on Kindle, iBooks, and Google Play Books. Published by Praeger (Santa Barbara, CA), September 2016.

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lead like a guide: how world-class mountain guides inspire us to be better leaders

by Christopher I. Maxwell, PhD

with a foreword by Rodrigo Jordan, PhdMt. Everest and k2 expedition leader

Discover the leadership strengths of world-class mountain guides and see how developing and applying these principles can help you reach for the highest summits in work—and in life.

This intriguing approach to business and personal success introduces six leadership strengths of world-class mountain guides: demonstrating social intelligence; adopting a flexible leadership style; empowering others; facilitating the development of trust; managing risk in an environment of uncertainty; and seeing the big picture. The premise? That these same strengths provide a valuable model in the workplace and other networks, whether one is already in a leadership position or aspiring to get there.

The result of over a decade of research combined with the author's personal experience, the book explains how mountain guides coach people to reach for their highest goals in the most challenging environments, often enabling them to far exceed what they imagined possible. The same principles can be applied in business and elsewhere. To set readers on the right path, the author explains each of the strengths, incorporating interviews and quotes from guides and expedition participants to illustrate the lesson and show how it was successfully utilized off the slopes. The book also provides a checklist of action steps readers can follow to foster skill development.

Features

- Teaches key leadership lessons gained from a decade spent traveling with world-class mountain guides and more than 200 top business school participants.

- Shares insights drawn from challenging experiences that will be inspiring and meaningful to readers.

- Includes contributions from participants who tell in their own words how they applied lessons-learned in organizations from American Express to MIcrosoft to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

- Features a foreword by mountaineer and educator Rodrigo Jordan, PhD, leader of the first South American team to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

praise for lead like a guide

"Whether your passion is mountaineering or business, Lead Like a Guide makes a compelling case that the ultimate act of leadership is helping others reach as high as they can." - Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times best-selling author of Give and Take and Originals.

"An accomplished leadership educator, Chris Maxwell is as comfortable on a mountain peak as he is in a classroom. In his book he brings together his amazing talents and provides the reader clear lessons and insights on some of the most valuable leadership principles, which are as applicable to the board room or government as they are to being part of a mountain-climbing team." - Jeffrey D. McCausland, PhD, former dean, U.S. Army War College; national security consultant for CBS Radio and TV; and founder and CEO, Diamond6 Leadership and Strategy, LLC.

"By looking far afield we sometimes see best what is most vital for home. From interviews with mountain guides and those they have led, Chris Maxwell offers absorbing accounts in Lead Like a Guide that show that thinking strategically, appraising risk, and empowering followers are essential not only for mountaineering but also for management." - Michael Useem, PhD, professor and director of the Leadership Center, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and co-author of Boards That Lead.